12 March 2007

Trench Lines



I was not crawling deliberately through the trench-line. I got on my knees from mischance, foot slipping on the accumulated leaves of the new century. I would definitely have preferred to walk upright, as they did after they dug these fortifications.

They would not have recognized what remains, even if they could find it. This is the time of year to look for the remains that rest in the woods, since when the leaves come up they cloak everything in dense green.

Only when the boughs are bare can the eye follow the lines of the ramparts, softened by time. I was in luck. I found an old topographical map, and was able to identify the old infantry trench that lead to an outer battery that accommodated five cannons.

This had once been a significant work. According to the engineers, this trench had been used to connect Fort Marcy and Fort Ethan Allen on the heights, forming the northwest corner of the defenses of the city.

The trench was intended to furnish covering fire “upon ground in contiguity to, but unseen from, the forts.” The connecting lines had earth slopes of about 45 degrees, thrown up from inside the line of excavation to a height of three or four feet. That produced a depth, in conjunction with the embankment, of over seven feet.

An intermediate step, two feet wide, broke the continuity of the earth slope. The bottom of the trench was graded to throw the drainage to the rear, and outlets for it were provided at suitable intervals. The trench behind was five feet and the crest of the parapet was around four feet thick.

In the day, they were covered with sod, and these digs ran for twenty miles They contained sixty-eight enclosed forts and batteries, emplacements for 1,120 guns, and 3 block-houses, served by thirteen miles of dedicated military road.

Brevet Major General Bayard, the architect, described his intention this way: “Every prominent point, at intervals of 800 to 1,000 yards, was occupied by an enclosed field-fort, every important approach or depression of ground, unseen from the forts, swept by a battery for field-guns, and the whole connected by rifle-trenches which were in fact lines of infantry parapet, furnishing emplacement for two ranks of men and affording covered communication along the line, while roads were opened wherever necessary, so that troops and artillery could be moved rapidly from one point of the immense periphery to another, or under cover, from point to point along the line."

I walked along the rampart and alternately down in the trench itself to pass through the brush that has grown up. Some of the trees are quite large now, the second and third generations since the place went back to sleep.

I was delighted with my find. The old trench was completely intact, running from the neatly trimmed verge on the highway and up-slope to turn and front the ramparts of the fort proper. Then it swung north eventually turning into a battery position with platforms for the guns, and the remains of the bombproof magazine in the center. Then the line swung toward the Pike, passing a collapsing cabin that was rumored to have held someone's body once, and then the trench ends abruptly at the fence line of the park, and the side of a modest white frame house.

Fort Marcy is pretty much as it was left by the Union Army, and has only flickered briefly in fame since, most recently when White House Counsel Vince Foster's body was found there.

The first time I visited the Fort was just after the event. I was headed to CIA on some business and had a few moments to kill. The park on which the Fort now resides has only one vehicle entrance, off the George Washington Parkway. There is a foot entrance, since in the days of the great conflict the orientation of the defenses were toward the Potomac, and the guns of the fort were intended to cover the Leesburg Road and the Chain Bridge Crossing into the nation's capital.

I entered the trench line near the tree where one of the witnesses testified he had stopped to relieve himself, while observing a Honda with Arkansas plates that did not belong to Mr. Foster at about the time of that the death occurred. He reported he was threatened by a man in a silver sedan.

Clambering out of the trench on the other side of the Fort I looked up to see the mouth of a civil war-vintage cannon that many used as a guide to the events of the death scene described in the Special Prosecutor's report.

I knew that the Park Service had moved it, for reasons best known to themselves.

The whole thing is remarkable. Like the rest of the great necklace of defensive works, the Fort almost didn't survive. It remained in the hands of the Gilbert Vanderwerken family since it was abandoned in 1865. The fitting of the Fort were considered to be just compensation for the use by the Federal government.

The nearby batteries, trenches and cleared fields of fire began to fill in with brush, though for years visitors to the Virginia side of the river noted the looming presence of the fortifications on all the hills.

Mr. Vanderwerken had been in omnibus transportation industry, and had over 13,000 acres of land in Arlington and Fairfax counties on which to graze and feed the horses required. Accordingly, the land on which Fort Marcy stood with its supporting works was allowed to slowly slump back into the soil untouched.

In 1956, however, Virginia Highway Department proposals for widening Route 123 put Fort Marcy in jeopardy, and local tradition was one of hearty contempt for the old army of occupation. In June 1957, a Mrs. R.F.S. Starr, learned that the Virginia Highway Department was starting work at the fort. She alerted the County Commission, and drove to the site, parking her car in front of the bulldozer's blade to halt further destruction. The County Supervisors voted to acquire the site and dispatched a police patrol to the site to insure that no additional destruction occurred.

Fairfax County and the Federal government wound up splitting the tab to purchase the property. The State of Virginia spoke from Richmond, expressing no interest in former Yankee fortifications.

The Federal Government received the deed to the fort and surrounding land on May 7, 1959, but the park wasn't opened to the public until four years later, on May 18, 1963. Today, the fifteen acres is the most pristine of the remaining Civil War Defenses of Washington.

The park has suffered, however, from a lack of funds for preservation and interpretation. During the mid-1990s, the National Park Service conducted archaeological and geographical mapping work there, which has provided new historical insights into garrison life during the Civil War.

Not to mention making sure nothing at all remained of Vince Foster.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
ww.vicsocotra.com

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